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THE EU STRENGTHENED.

The French people have turned the tide on the 2016 populist surge which led to reckless Brexit and reckless Trump in the White House.

Opponents of the European Union were forecasting it would break up following populist success in Hungary, Holland and France. All three countries have rejected a return to a nationalist Europe with all the potential consequences that could bring. With the UKIP style implosion of the Alternative for Deutschland Party in Germany I predict a victory for Angela Merkel this autumn. Then we will see how strong and stable Mrs May will be when faced with France, Germany and the other 25 European countries insisting that if you are out of a club you must have a worse deal than if you are in.

I saw a report this week on a Shropshire company that makes engine blocks. They must cross 5 European borders in ten days and time is vital. They are desperately worried about how they are going to operate outside the EU. That’s the reality facing business. Let’s hope Jeremy Corbyn’s refusal to rule out staying in the EU wasn’t just another blunder, although the Lib Dems offer the clearest policy on a second referendum.

BACK IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT.

Geoff Driver is the great survivor of Lancashire politics. After a controversial reign as Chief Executive of Preston Council, he made a successful change to politics leading the Conservatives to victory in the county in 2009. Thrown out of office in 2013, he survived a leadership challenge, police dropped an investigation into him over the One Connect Ltd issue and last Friday I was in County Hall for his return to office.

He faces big challenges to soften the cuts that Labour reluctantly made. Driver insists there will be no sweetheart deals with his government. A final word on this. Jeni Mein, the outgoing Labour leader was one of the most decent hard working politicians I had the pleasure to meet. Good luck to her successor, Nelson councillor Azhar Ali. He will prove a lively opponent for Geoff Driver.

MAYORS.

After snubbing Jeremy Corbin at a victory celebration, Andy Burnham was quickly down to work making two good deputy appointments. Sir Richard Leese is taking on the business portfolio. Does this show Leese is preparing to end his long tenure as leader of Manchester? Anyway, from Burnham’s point of view…..(fill in the tent and urination metaphor here). The other key appointment is Bev Hughes to look after crime and the police. The former Stretford and Urmston MP will be taking over from the ex-Police Commissioner Tony Lloyd who hopes to win the Rochdale seat.

That choice by a panel of Labour’s National Executive has been welcomed by the constituency whereas in Liverpool Walton the choice of a Unite placeman, Daniel Carden, at the expense of Liverpool mayor Joe Anderson has caused outrage. These panels should have the constituency chair as a member and certainly should not have a Unite member as was the case with Walton. But if a party is so dependent on one source of funding, this is what you get.

Joe heading for Westminster was a neat way of solving a

potential conflict between him and newly elected City

Region Mayor, Steve Rotheram. We’ll have to see if grown

up behaviour prevails to the advantage of the city region.

GENERAL ELECTION POINTERS.

The local elections showed Labour’s fragility in the North

outside its urban heartland. A spectacular defeat to the

Tories in Derbyshire was followed by the loss of

Lancashire and largest party status in Cumbria. There are many marginal seats in these areas for the Conservatives to target.

LABOUR COPING.

With the NHS at breaking point, our prisons in meltdown and the government’s plan to solve the housing crisis widely criticised, the Tories don’t deserve any success in next week’s by elections.

The fact that the seats of Copeland and Stoke Central are in play is due to the literally incredible Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. It’s all so different from twenty years ago, when Labour swept the Tories out of Wirral South in a by election which was a foretaste of the Blair landslide to come months later.

Things have reached such a pass that two talented, but vastly inexperienced, Greater Manchester MPs are being suggested as successors to the hapless Corbyn. Shadow Business Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey (Salford) and Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner (Ashton) have been MPs for less than two years and are virtually unknown on the national stage.

This speculation was provoked by a survey in Manchester that showed diehard Labour supporters giving Corbyn dire ratings. That supports what I am picking up from my sources within the party.

So why do I think Labour might hold on to both seats? The greatest threat to them comes in Copeland where Corbyn’s equivocal attitude to nuclear power and nuclear weapons is toxic in an area that depends on both for jobs. The Labour majority is slim. The seat includes the genteel town of Keswick as well as the more industrial coastal strip around Sellafield and Whitehaven and voters tend to punish parties when the sitting MP walks off the job as Jamie Reed did. That said the Labour candidate, Gillian Troughton, has made clear her support for all things nuclear, has distanced herself from Corbyn and is campaigning hard against plans to transfer maternity services from Whitehaven to Carlisle.

Theresa May visited the constituency this week. Prime Ministers don’t usually do that if they think their party is going to lose. That said Copeland/Whitehaven has been Labour territory since 1935 and they could cling on.

WHY VOTE UKIP?

Tristram Hunt was imposed on Stoke Central in 2010 when that was the way things were done by New Labour. It was no surprise when he found the attractions of the ceramics at the Victoria and Albert Museum more attractive than representing the people of the Potteries, who voted heavily to leave the EU. Hunt’s departure has given UKIP the perfect chance to show that they can appeal to Labour voters fed up with the metropolitan values of the Jeremy Corbyn Labour Party.

But there are big risks for UKIP. Their new leader Paul Nuttall has had to put his neck on the line and fight the seat when his inclination may have been to give it more time before trying for parliament. He has quickly found out that being a candidate leads to unwelcome publicity. So it has proved as it has emerged that he did not lose close relatives in the Hillsborough disaster. His brand is that of a plain speaking scouser which might not play well in the Potteries. UKIP’s main challenge thought is to offer credible policies for the working class on other issues than Europe. The government is forcing a hard Brexit on us, so what’s the point of voting UKIP?

It may be that the disillusionment with politics that was so strong last June will give UKIP their first northern seat, but Labour still have a chance.

Any hope that the New Year would bring signs that we are not heading over the Brexit cliff were quickly dashed with the resignation of Sir Ivan Rogers. The UK envoy to the European Union became exasperated that the May government had no plan, was guilty of muddled thinking and that the British team to conduct the exit talks was seriously underpowered for the ten year task.

So in this post truth age we neither want to hear from experts or the messengers that bring them. As much as I support a second referendum on the ultimate package, I think our European colleagues would be so fed up with us by 2019 that they would want us out anyway. This must be the year when we try to reverse the process but there is no sign of the centre left coalition that would be needed.

Meanwhile the European Union and the wider world with which we are negotiating could change dramatically in 2017. We are about to see the most unpredictable change of power in America that anyone can remember. Donald Trump is certainly making his mark already. Ford’s decision to cancel a major car plant in Mexico and build it in Michigan shows that American business takes him seriously.

In Europe the question will be whether populism has peaked. They could triumph in Italy and the Netherlands but right winger François Fillon should see off Marine Le Pen and Angela Merkel is likely to see off her opponents in Germany.

In the North we will see the first elected mayors for the city regions of Greater Manchester and Liverpool.

It seems certain that Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram will win but there will be interest in the size of the UKIP vote. The party’s new leader Paul Nuttall needs to show what policies, other than getting out of the EU, the party stands for. Will they develop credible policies on health, housing and crime to woo northern voters from the weak Labour Party. A parliamentary test will come in Copeland where another moderate Labour MP has concluded the cause is hopeless and walked away.

Good luck to Hull in its year as Capital of Culture. Let us hope it is a sign of tangible benefits coming to the Northern Powerhouse. Plans for trans Pennine rail improvements and single public transport ticketing need to move from the drawing boards to reality.

It will be Theresa May’s first full year in power. She is in danger of being completely overwhelmed by the Brexit process even though there are major challenges at home in the NHS, elderly care, housing and immigration. She may lose popularity but her political opponents are weak. Labour is seen as irrelevant by most people. The Lib Dems have only just begun the road to recovery and UKIP are untested on the domestic front.

On the world stage expect ISIS to be weakened but that could mean their battle hardened members returning to the West to inflict more atrocities in our cities. Meanwhile China will be keeping a wary eye on a possible unlikely warming of relations between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

One of the reasons for the huge gap that is opening up between the people and the elite across the western world, is bad behaviour by some big businesses.

I always thought we should dismiss the Prime Minister’s initial mission statement about being a government for all as “what they all say” and so it has proved in relation to the Green Paper on Corporate Governance. This was meant to be a signal that ministers were going to grapple with the Philip Green’s of this world and the huge gap between workers on frozen pay and bosses paid 140 times more in some cases.

Instead of workers on boards, they are to have a “voice”. There is little on giving pension scheme members more say, the issue at the heart of the British Home Stores scandal.

Under consideration are pay ratios to show the gap in earnings between Chief Executives and workers, more power for shareholders to vote against bosses pay rises, private firms to be held to the same standards as public companies and a code of practice.

Will any of this be effective in bringing about more corporate business responsibility. The government seem to be in nudging not compelling mood.

THE CHALLENGE OF NUTTALL.

Blue Labour is an organisation that worries about the growing gap between its traditional northern working class base and the liberal (small L) elite who have enthusiastically embraced the social and economic changes of recent years.

They met in Manchester at the weekend to ask questions like “might there be a hermeneutic of continuity reuniting the working class with those that fear its voice?” Now I’m happy to share a Gauloises Disque Bleu (remember them in soft white packets) with any number of intellectuals and discuss the future of socialism. However I think there is a lack of urgency on the centre left and a self indulgent sectarianism between Greens, Liberal Democrats and Corbyn opponents.

While they agonise the new UKIP leader Paul Nuttall says he is going to appeal to Labour voters in the North on the issues of immigration, crime, foreign aid and putting British people at the top of the queue for jobs.

What is the centre left response to that agenda which some will feel has a whiff of racism? Well for one thing what are UKIP going to do about housing, adult social care and the productivity gap? But the centre left do need to make an effective response on the “awkward” issues like immigration. Otherwise those many UKIP second places in wards and constituencies will fall from Labour’s grasp.

ON BALANCE I MOURN CASTRO’S PASSING.

Fidel Castro’s coup in Cuba happened as I began to take an interest in politics. He has been around all my adult life so some thoughts at the time of his passing seem appropriate.

His coup removed a regime that was turning Cuba into a brothel and casino dominated by the United States. Castro wanted American help but instead faced the Bay of Pigs invasion designed to topple him. He therefore embraced the Soviet Union and foolishly allowed them to base missiles on the island which nearly brought about a nuclear war. He was ruthless with opponents and persecuted gays. But, but, but he gave the Cuban people health and education standards rarely matched in the Americas. He also sent troops to confront apartheid South Africa and contributed to its end.

We will all be weighed in the balance and for only a virtuous few will the scale be wildly in their favour.